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Splitting a Soul~Chapter 12
“So you used to fight with my dad?” Aisling beamed with excitement. “You’re just as hyper as your old man; maybe even more so,” Gear laughed as he pushed Jack’s car into the garage. After giving the key a few turns with no success, we had to resort to pushing. Then after we introduced ourselves, Gear had to ask if Aisling was related to Nolan Swift at all. That name seemed to pop up whenever I went anywhere with Aisling. I even remember Joe mentioning the name a few times during training. “But yes, we saved the world together. I even built the van we used to save the world!” “You saved the world in a van? That sounds kind of lame,” Jack commented. “Hey, this was no ordinary van! It had rockets and weapons and a little red button!” Gear explained as he tried to show us all the things it had with his hands, but the vision was somewhat lost on us. When we got the car on a lift, Gear took a grim look at it as he ran his hands along the frame. “How does it look?” Kimi asked as she watched. “Well let me put it this way; I’m going to need a special set of tools to fix this hunk of junk up,” Gear explained as got to the engine. He placed his hand on the metal frame of the car and the dents began to correct themselves. When it was all done, a few pieces of the engine fell out from under the hood and the muffler fell as well. “That wasn’t supposed to happen…” “Dude, you broke my car!” Jack complained. “Your car was broken way before I got my hands on it!” Gear chided. He then walked over to the wall and pulled a large lever, causing the car to descend. “I thought you said you could fix it,” Jack complained again. “I said I would need a special set of tools to fix it; so we need to go to my special garage,” Gear said and as the car lowered, the floor began to open up and the car dropped down to an even deeper level of the garage. Stairs then began to slide out of the wall one at a time, leading down into the sub-level. “Alright, everyone down.” We walked down the stair and were surprised by the size of the place. I mean the actual shop that people saw was a simple two car garage with a lobby area. The garage itself was cluttered with various equipment that caused the place to look even smaller. There was oil spills all over the place and none of the tools looked like they had been put back in their right place. Down below however, he had several rows of machine parts all organized in alphabetical order with some kind of number code under each one. It also looked like he had a lot of projects going on at the same time. In the back corner of the room was a battle suit that looked like something from an old cartoon called Dexter’s Laboratory. In one area he had a skateboard that seemed to be hovering a few inches off the ground. He also had pretty much every kind of vehicle from scooters to tanks. He even had a car made to look like the Batmobile. As little as I knew about mechanics, this was one pretty cool room. “Hey, what does this do?!” Aisling asked with excitement as she pointed to something on the wall. “That is a…” Gear began, but was cut off by Aisling. “What about this thing?” she asked, racing to another area of the room. Aisling did this several times, running to multiple areas of the underground shop, looked at something for a second, then went on to the next area. Then she picked up something and Gear froze. It didn’t look that special; in fact it kind of looked like a toaster. “Wait!” he yelled before taking a slower tone and talked somewhat slower. “Put that down carefully and step away.” “Why, what does it do?” Aisling asked as she began to put it down, but accidently hit a switch, causing several lights on the machine to go off at once and a meter began to full up. 56%...72%...86%...75%...92%... “Everyone hit the deck!” Gear said and we all dropped to the ground. Aisling quickly dropped it and ran behind the tank. The machine finally got to 100% and began to glow with golden light. I was expecting some kind of giant blast, but all that happened was two pieces of toast popping out of the top. No explosion, no fancy laser blast, just burned toast. “That wasn’t so bad,” Kimi said as she began to rise to her feet. Just then the toaster pulled the burned bread back in and fired them in two different directions. One piece bounced off the ceiling and embedded itself in the metal frame of the tank. The other also bounced off the ceiling and went flying straight for Kimi. I jumped to my feet and pulled out my sword, cutting the evil toast in half. It was actually much less exciting then it sounded, but that toast felt like it was made from rocks. We all got to our feet and Gear stormed off toward Aisling. “Hands in your pockets!” he yelled at her and she bowed her head in shame. “Dude, you need to fix your toaster,” Jack said as he gave it a few soft kicks, as if to make sure it was dead. “I’m getting to it. I was trying to find a way to make bread into toast faster. Then one thing lead to another…” Gear trailed off as if having some kind of bad memory. His attention then went back to the car. “Right, the car.” He seemed to lose all interest in us and popped the hood. He then started ripping out pipes, wires, fans, and a few things I didn’t even know what they were with his bare hands. The entire time Jack was freaking out, saying that the crazy mechanic was destroying his precious baby. “Eve, 11, 34, 72, and 117,” Gear ordered and a small robot that ran on a track on the ceiling began to go up and down the aisles, picking up parts as it went along and placing them in a bin. It then went over to Gear, who started rebuilding the engine. He tried to put one part in, but then tossed it back at Eve. “I said 117, not 171.” “That is 117,” Eve said back in a robotic tone. “Oh, well in that case can I have 171. Also, keep up the good work,” Gear said as he gave the mechanical arm a thumbs us. It let out what could only be described as a sigh and went back down the aisles, bringing back another part. Gear grabbed it and went back into the engine. “Perfect.” This went on for what seemed like hours. During that entire time Aisling never once removed her hands from her pockets. In fact this was pretty much the longest I had ever seen her stay in one place without being asleep. Jack was still half-crying as Gear kept pulling parts out of the car and putting in new ones. “Done!” Gear finally said as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. “And now for the bill.” “What?” I said a little absentmindedly. I had never expected him to charge us for his help, but he never said he was going to do it for free either. I remembered how my mom would complain about the price of an oil change so how much would it be to replace almost an entire car? I looked at the others and they all had the same look as I did. All at once we began reaching into our pockets and pulling out anything we could find. I had about two golden drachmas, Aisling had one, and no one else had any. Kimi was pulling out things from her pockets, like her bow and a few vials of Greek fire. I think there were a set of chattering teeth as well, but she tossed them aside. And Jack had some pocket lint and an old wallet that was completely devoid of any cash. “I’m just kidding you,” Gear laughed after seeing our worried faces. “You guys gave me more than enough.” “We did?” Kimi asked surprised. “You brought to my shop three automatons and their bikes. All the fun I’m going to have working on them. Maybe I can even put them to work fixing cars while I can finally get around to my hot chocolate maker,” Gear informed as he got that far away look again before snapping back to reality. “Right, well I have some work to do, so good luck on your quest and bring your car around if you ever need inspection. I don’t think any other shop in the country would pass that monstrosity.” “Don’t listen to him Baby, you’re beautiful,” Jack said as he gave his car a hug, or at least the best hug he could. “There’s a guy that loves his car,” Gear said, watching Jack almost kiss it, but thankfully he stopped himself. “I don’t see why,” I sighed. “The thing is a hunk of junk. I saw how many parts you had to replace to even get to close to working order.” “Sure I replaced a part or twenty, but all the parts working together is what matters,” Gear explained, and I wondered if he was talking about more than just Jack’s car. “By the way before you go, I got something for you.” “I couldn’t ask you for anymore,” I insisted, but he just walked over to his work desk and shuffled around a few papers. “Trust me, it isn’t exactly something you want to know about,” Gear said as he walked over and handed me a letter. Dear Mike, Just saw the strangest thing fly over my shop. It looked like a flying ship heading North-East toward Indianapolis, or at least it will if it keeps going the same course. Do you know anything about this? Write me back when you get the chance. Yours in demigod-ishness, Leo Valdez “That sounds like the Collector,” Aisling said as she grabbed the note and reread it. “That isn’t even the strangest thing,” Jack said as he looked at the envelope. “Who writes letters anymore?” “That is what you got out of this?” Aisling almost yelled. “We have bigger problems now! The Collector is going to the same place we are so there must be something important there.” “Who?” Jack asked absentmindedly. “That’s right, you don’t know about him,” Kimi realized. “He is this eccentric guy that collects ancient Greek artifacts of all kind.” “And recently he has added the Elementals to his list of collector’s items,” I explained. “Which is pretty much tossing all of nature into disarray. Some of the minor ones like the Ice and Lightning Elementals have already been captured, as well as the Fire Elemental.” “And you can control water and rock using your sword. How is that different?” Jack asked skeptically. “Because Ash doesn’t force the Elementals to help him,” Kimi chided. “He’s earned their respect and they help willingly.” “Fair enough,” Jack said. “So if we want to beat this guy, we need to get to Indianapolis before he does?” “You guys were trying to drive all the way to Indianapolis in that car,” Gear interrupted. “That’s rich; good thing those automatons forced you here or you would have maybe gone another few miles before the engine exploded.” “Anyway, we need to get moving,” Aisling ordered and Gear hit a switch, causing the car to rise up to the main garage. We walked up the steps and gave our final goodbyes to Gear.